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Franz Boas and the Discovery of Culture 36 regional peculiarities only if it did not carry different values with it, otherwise such excess baggage had to be removed. Those who cared to deal with such fundamental differences, as opposed to superficial, cultural differences, resurrected the old “civilization,” and suitably pluralized it, in defiance of pluralized “culture.” Disputes in international relations could then be put in terms of different civilizations, of matters of profound principle, not of specific grievances. As we begin the 21 st century, the new discourse orbits around the supposed “Clash of Civilizations.” In such an account, culture would serve as scientific evidence. One could conceive of a comparative method, sifting through cultural differences, finding traces of the profound rifts in the underlying fabric of civilization. Anthropologists and historians could work together to pinpoint the exact moment when East separated from West. The “psychic unity of humanity” has finally been shattered. Should anthropologists who still believe in “psychic unity” despair of “culture?” Some, indeed, have. Adam Kuper, in his native South Africa, found that culture was too often used as a tool for segregation, and that anthropological theory was either incapable of combating it, due to its own weaknesses, or was directly part of the problem. His solution was to never discuss culture on its own terms, only in terms of how it related to other aspects of life. 97 This approach is reminiscent of Boas’ consideration of culture together with biology. Kuper’s approach, however useful for an anthropologist and his or her conscience, has not yet been accepted in politics, where cultural difference is still fought for as a right in itself, often with legal implications. Anthropologists refusing culture’s messy exterior cannot make it go away. Furthermore, abandoning culture entirely would be dangerous, as something else would rush in to fill the void in dealing with human difference. It would most likely be either multiculturalism or the “Clash of Civilizations,” which both seem to derive from Boas, for whom culture was always ambiguous. The ambiguity, in Boas’ fight against racism and nativism, was an advantage: culture was never fully pinned down. All of Boas’ inherited tensions came to play in it. First, the Humboldtian twist between universality and particularity kept Boas from creating a grand theory of culture. His project was skeptical and slow, his goal being first to construct the history, through comparative cosmography, and only then deduct “laws.” He believed that he would find similar patterns occurring all over the world, in all cultures, but did not presume to know in advance what they might mean. The other tension was between Dilthey’s Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften, which for Boas overlapped. Not only was he wearing two hats, that of the physicist and that of the geographer, but he was using both approaches to look at the same things: measuring Kwakiutl heads while observing their potlatches. Both methods suggested historical relationships, but these two bodies of knowledge were not easily reconcilable. Boas used culture to fight racism, but he did not abandon race. It is thus somewhat unlike Boas, and more like Dilthey, to talk about culture without talking about race. Inadvertently, through practice and not through theory, Boas fulfilled the goals of Bastian’s ethnology, of uniting Geisteswissenschaften with Naturwissenschaften. The full implications of this achievement have yet to be fully acknowledged and explored. This scientific ambiguity carried on to his politics. Culture was a basis for human sympathy, though not for a “psychic unity of humanity” in the Enlightenment sense of Virchow, or even in the Romantic sense that Waitz had strived for. It could, on the 97 Kuper 1999, p. 247
Franz Boas and the Discovery of Culture 37 contrary, prove a barrier between people as strong as that erected by language. He never even argued that population groups were equal mentally, only that such racial differences had no effect on the fundamental capacity for creating and participating in rich culture. Boas was convinced that the Kwakiutl lived a life no less sophisticated than his own, and fought ceaselessly to make this common knowledge. He was dealing, however, with a vastly unequal situation. His Kwakiutl were victims, not aggressors. How would he deal with hypothetical “fundamentalist Kwakiutl” suicide bombers? What about those aspects of culture unworthy of celebration? Boas’ ambiguity is not good enough for a world divided by class, gender, nation and, as we are now told, civilization. In the late 20 th century, the anthropologists Marshal Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere entered into a fascinating gladiatorial duel about Captain James Cook’s encounter with the native Polynesians. 98 Sahlins argued that Polynesian thought, colored by Polynesian culture, was substantially different from his own, and so he was willing to accept, as Cook did, that the Polynesians did, in fact, believe that Cook was their god Lono. For Obeyesekere, cultural difference could not be so substantial. For him, humanity was united by a common rationality, and Sahlins’ position was tantamount to accusing the Polynesian of being dimwitted and gullible. Pointing out ambiguities in the evidence, he showed, convincingly, that the Polynesians may have, in fact, been playing along with the Lono-as-Cook myth in an intricate power-play between competing tribes and the invincible, merciless colonial force. Sahlins, according to Obeyesekere’s accusation, had understood culture, crudely, as a kind of mass hypnosis. The debate parallels that between Boas and Mason, with Boas/Sahlins arguing for difference, and Mason/Obeyesekere arguing for commonality. The commonality that Mason represented was, for Boas, unscientific, but not so different from his own. To Mason, people all over the world made masks and played music, and, whatever the causes, whatever local meanings that Boas would locate within the culture, that fact, in itself, was significant. Were he not so invested in the confrontation, Boas might have found some value in this, a basis for sympathy. Boas, however, was at the time more interested in using the comparative method to reconstruct the past, not so much the Bildung of the future. It was only much later that he made the political connection, and could, we may presume, have compromised with Mason, had the issue been raised again. A museum could be arranged historically, culturally, but also politically, cross-culturally. Visitors to the museum would be making their own connections anyway, based on their own prejudices. A museum itself could be seen as a microcosm of Boas’ “culture.” As for the new debate, we may never know what the Polynesians thought of Cook. Obeyesekere’s call, appropriate or not to his assault on Sahlins, nevertheless remains pertinent to politics. Cultural difference is real, sometimes profound, but never insurmountable. People everywhere, and probably throughout history, have learned new languages and customs. Sometimes, new culture is only appropriated, unhooked from the new and reintegrated into the old. Often, however, people acquire culture with its associated worldviews, ambiguous as they may be, and appropriately change, or at least add layers to, their own values. They can do this because all culture is manmade, and thus adaptable by anyone. Cultures may be integrated, even fairly self-contained, but people rarely are. Perhaps, then, “culture,” in Boas’ sense, is no longer relevant. It may never have been completely relevant to him, as it never was, explicitly, a weapon in his battles. 98 Sahlins 1985, Obeyesekere 1992, Sahlins 1995
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